


Rituals

by gala_apples



Series: If Love is a Mixtape [8]
Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Child Abuse, Cutting, Gen, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-11
Updated: 2012-04-11
Packaged: 2017-11-03 11:09:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are three things that can save a man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rituals

**Author's Note:**

> If Love is a Mixtape... then life is the tracks you listen to. (each story was written while listening to one song on repeat, for however long it took. In the case of side A track 5, that means a 3 minute song on repeat for about 6 hours. *head bash*)
> 
> Side B: John  
> Track 3: Emery- Bloodless. More specifically "and as a little boy, tries to hide his eyes, with reeds and rituals, with paper and a knife... the fire will always burn".

There are three things that John knows can save a man. It takes a rough life to find your personal saviour, it's why he hates commercial religion. Literally, a man lecturing on television sunday morning, and his speech cut in half by a set of four commericals claiming the importance of deodorant, the new burger at McDonalds, the best new car, and a small preview for the multi-million dollar prime-time show on later that night. When a person can find their way to God because they need Him to survive that's one thing. Going every Sunday because it's a learned behaviour, and forgetting every other day that they believe is an entirely different thing.

John doesn't do the God thing. He thinks one might exist, but it's not really up to him. As Dani proves, everyone's reality is their own, and even if in his world there isn't a God, that doesn't mean every other universe doesn't have one. 

He's got his own way to live, found in situations requiring coping. Coping and Competence, a chapter in a development book his sister was reading the day he found paper. He knows how to cope. He doesn't think he can ever be competent. That characteristic involves not being scared, and he always is.

Paper means expression, in his case writing. He might have the ability to draw, he hasn't tried. Drawing is less of a denial, there are no names or labels in a drawing. One could sketch to get rid of everything, and still have it all on the page. When John writes his memoirs, there are names and labels. They're all false, but writing these names makes the events happen to other people. Once another name has claimed that history, it doesn't have to be his anymore. 

It was his mother that caused him to find the knife. Chores meant he was to do the dishes every night. One night he was rubbing the coarse ripped towel over the cutlery, and realised it didn't have to go back in the drawer. His mother asked the next morning, but he feigned cluelessness. It was a risk to lie when the Man could search his barren bedroom and find it in an instant. But she wasn't brave enough to tell the Man, so no one had to face him.

He writes about the blood, ascribing the pain and loathing in others eyes to a hispanic female. It's no longer his, it's Bonita's. He draws blood, and lets the new clean liquid wash over the old stained remembered blood. Lets the fact that he controls it now wash over the fact that he used to not have control.

He found the fire on his own. It's salvation just as much as paper or knife, just another way to expel the darkness.

When the bodies are found, there is nothing left. No paper to reveal the past, no knife to control the present. The bodies are charred, and there is no blood left. The officer notes that there are only three bodies -Man, Woman, Adolescent Female- not four -Man, Woman, Adolescent Female, Adolescent Male.

Fire is the future. There will never be blood again.


End file.
